


Heart-Shaped

by LSquared80



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-09 01:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11094381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LSquared80/pseuds/LSquared80
Summary: Everything is different in Gilead but some things stay the same. Like breakups.





	Heart-Shaped

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through Episode 8.

First love lacks subtlety. June’s earliest romances were a progression of heart-shaped everything - cards, boxes of chocolate, pendants. The shape was fake, cartoonish. First love lacks the arteries and valves and blood. It doesn’t acknowledge the heart is the shape of a closed fist.

x

There are no empty pints of ice cream littering the coffee table. June doesn’t have photographs of Nick to rip into shreds. She can’t dump artifacts of their relationship into a trash can and set it on fire; there are no ticket stubs from movies they saw together. She can’t drown her memories in a bottle of wine while Moira talks shit about him on the other end of the sofa.

Despite the lack of break-up rituals in Gilead, some things remain the same. 

June and Nick know the same people. She has to see him almost daily – from her window when he’s working in the yard, the back of his head as he drives her to the doctor, while the Commander reads scripture before the ceremony. She has to pretend it doesn’t hurt to breathe when she sees him, like there isn’t a hand squeezed around her throat every time he looks her way. 

x

She taught Hannah how to breathe on the car window and draw the shape of a heart in the fog. 

It was a message they all left for each other around the house – on the bathroom mirror, the front window. 

x

There is a moment June and Nick are left alone in the kitchen. He’s been under the hood of the car and is there to scrub grease from his hands. He turns around from the sink and there is a smear along his jaw. She picks the dishtowel up and reaches toward him, rubs the wet cloth against the dark smudge. 

Nick curls his fingers around her wrist, holding her hand there. 

She feels his thumb pressing into her flesh. Pushing against her erratic pulse. She can’t tell if he’s trying to keep her there or stop her. June lets go of the towel so her fingers can feel his bare skin until they both let go, shove away from one another like it burns to touch.

x

The worst part might be the disappointment. Without Emily, June thought she had found her companion in resistance. Nick was the only man – the only person – who listened when she said _don’t_ or _stop_. It seemed safe to believe he disagreed with Gilead, that he had almost as little choice as she did. 

x

She’s been summoned to work in the garden with Serena Joy. The ground is damp and her knees sink into the mud. June can predict the way Rita will roll her eyes when she walks back into the house; more work for the Martha, something else to throw in the laundry. 

June is tasked with picking up rocks and twigs, getting a new plot of ground clear so Serena Joy can plant a fresh crop of flowers or herbs. She finds a rock that looks like a misshapen heart. She holds it on her palm and is reminded of the way Hannah would draw a heart, one side bigger than the other. 

She looks toward the apartment above the garage. June imagines throwing the rock at Nick’s window and wonders if the glass around his home is also shatterproof. She wants to hurl the stone, to see if it would bounce back at her or shatter the window and land somewhere near his bed. 

x

For a brief time he was her salve to life as a handmaid. Her escape. June could distract herself from her rote, painful existence when she went to Nick. Now he’s just another memory that plagues her mind, taunts her from afar. He’s something else she can’t quite reach.

June’s guilt is stronger now that Nick is something else from her past. It feels like more of a betrayal to Luke, because it didn’t last, it didn’t turn out to be the one and only way she could find respite and a type of joy. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispers on repeat from the floor of the closet. 

x

June swirls the spoon in her oatmeal, drawing circles. She remembers trying to get Hannah to eat a breakfast that wasn’t a donut. She tried everything to make nutrition fun. She made a smiley face out of blueberries and bananas on a plate, arranged strawberry slices on top of oatmeal in the shape of a dog, a heart, whatever Hannah requested even if the end result bore little resemblance. 

The door squeaks open and she can hear the slap of Nick’s boots on the tiled floor. He asks Rita about the gift for Mrs. Putnam and Rita winces; she forgot something. She leaves and Nick leans against the counter, looking at June. 

She thinks about music, mixed tapes and playlists – things of the past that would help someone cope with lost love. June wonders what song would be playing over this moment. Something mournful, full of longing and spiked with a little bit of anger. She can almost hear it, the music swelling to a crescendo as she stands from her seat, picking up her bowl. She stops in front of him.

He tucks his bottom lip under his teeth. His eyes waver, trying not to look at her but also wanting to see as much of her as he can before it’s imperative to stop. 

June says, “You’re blocking the sink,” and once he moves aside she sets the bowl over the drain and runs the water for a moment. She turns and leaves. _I’m doing fine without you._

x

She is suffocating in her room. June throws the blankets to the foot of the bed and paces the floor. She can’t sleep. She’s hot. She has an insatiable hunger. 

June turns the knob on her bedroom door quietly, pulls the door shut behind her. She pads down the hallway and toward the kitchen, toward the backdoor. It’s cold but the air and the chilled ground are soothing as she walks outside. She lifts her gaze toward Nick’s apartment and startles at the sight of him halfway down the stairs. Was he doing the same thing? Not sleeping, scorched from the inside out by the memory of her touch? 

She advances toward him and they meet at the rocky stairs. June’s heart hammers in her chest and her breath materializes in the night air like a cloud of smoke. This is that moment, from the old world, she thinks, when two ex-lovers let go of anger and pride for one more night. Breakup sex, they called it. 

“It’s cold,” she says. “Aren’t you going to invite me inside?”


End file.
